“Okay, it’s just me, I’m sick. But now—now you are divorced. So what are your options for replacing the stick in your ass with—”
“Are you endeavoring to outdo the pedophilia comment?”
Elizabeth groaned as the iPod went over to the next song, a slow ballad. She jumped down, stomped over to it, and skipped to a bop. “Show a little gratitude, I’m trying to get you laid here. So what are your options? There’re hookers…”
Janet shook her head in quite involuntary amusement. “Oh, that’s my first option?”
“Hey, they’re sex workers, let them go first for once. The problem being, most of them are straight. Have you ever been eaten out by a straight woman?”
“By definition, no.”
“It’s like your pussy is the cockroaches on an episode of Fear Factor. Very bad for your self-esteem.”
Janet took off her glasses and kneaded her sinuses. “Well, you have thoroughly shot down my plan to debase myself with lesbian prostitutes. How should I repay your words of wisdom?”
“Wear tighter skirts,” Elizabeth replied without missing a beat. “Then there’s dating—”
“Sure you don’t want to go arranged marriage first? Mail-order bride?”
“Not in this economy. Now, I assume you’ve absorbed enough of me talking about my dating life to know you wouldn’t stand a chance. You’d be like a seal on Shark Week. At best, you manage to jump through the air in HD slow-motion before a Great White jumps after you and bites you out of the air. Because, I love you, but you are not as good a date as me.”
“So I don’t put out?”
“Exactly.” Elizabeth wound her hands together. “Which leaves this young, impressionable, eager-to-please girl with a huge crush on you that just wants to have a clandestine office affair before Donald Trump starts World War 3.”
“Office romances never work out.”
Elizabeth flailed her hands by her ears. “I’m not saying you have to introduce her to your father—I don’t hate her or anything—I’m saying she so clearly wants to eat you. Just let her. Lie back and think of spreadsheets or whatever. Let your skin clear up and your pores open and your hair get that bounce in it again.”
“So she’s taking me to a spa at some point?”
“Excess sarcasm is a symptom of chastity.” Elizabeth waved a finger at her. “You’d be doing her a favor! She’ll be able to tell her grandkids about how when she was their age, she had a great fuck with a hot older woman, they’ll discover the love letters the two of you wrote, back and forth, they’ll turn it into a book, and then into a movie, older women will become sexy, by then I’ll be old, but then there’ll be all these new hot twentysomethings who want to have their own May/December romance.”
“I hardly think I’m a December.”
“August?” Elizabeth bargained.
“I’ll take it.”
“Where was I?”
“You were shutting up and letting me work.”
“I’m just saying, you remember what a big deal it was when Bound came out? She grew up on Bound! That’s her starting point.”
“I’m actually going through her e-mails and, believe it or not, there’s nothing in here about her being in treatment for nymphomania, so I think this obsession you’ve assigned her about me is sexualizing something entirely innocent—OH GOD!”
“What?” Elizabeth demanded, the smell of gossip propelling her next to Janet almost in a single bound. Janet was too stunned to close the window before Elizabeth could see.
Elizabeth saw. And laughed. “Ho, shit!”
Wendy’s phone rang. She stopped, staring at her computer screen, wondering whether to finish her thought or silence the most incessantly Pavlovian sound in the world, but then she realized she’d completely lost her train of thought and the e-mail was ruined anyway. And the phone was on its third ring. She picked it up. “Wendy Cedar.”
“Wendy. Smile.”
Wendy thought don’t tell me what to do before realizing it was Elizabeth introducing herself. “Yeah?”
“Janet wants to see you.”
“She really pays you just to make phone calls for her?”
“If you had the money, wouldn’t you?” Then Elizabeth hung up.
Wendy stared at her screen, trying to summon up however she’d been hoping to end the e-mail, but it was hopeless. She saved the draft and resolved to think on it over lunch. Or maybe the come-to-Jesus with Janet would jog something loose.
After a brisk walk from her end of the hall to Janet’s, she came to Elizabeth’s little cubby, was waved in, and finally arrived in Janet’s presence.
“Ms. Lace, hi,” Wendy opened. “Finally getting that Tupperware back to me, huh? I was totally okay with you keeping it, but yeah, super-considerate to be giving it back.”
Janet steamrolled over her attempts at sociability. “Do you recall subsection B, paragraph twelve, of your employment contract?”
“Hold on, I know this one, was just thinking of it five minutes ago—” Wendy didn’t know why she made lame jokes around Janet. She never laughed…well, sometimes she smiled.
“The contract that you signed, in the wake of the Patriot Act, designates this company as a defense contractor and you as a government employee with a corresponding security clearance. That being the case, in the event of a credible breach of corporate secrecy, we retain the right to go through private communications.”
“Excuse me?”
“We can read your e-mails,” Janet said, barely mustering a sigh over Wendy once more driving outside the fast lane.
“Read my—I have never, not once—I wouldn’t leak information, Janet, you know me. Who would I even leak it to?”
“Foreign powers. Corporate rivals. Stephen Colbert. How am I supposed to know?”
“Are you calling me a traitor? Are you sending me to Guantanamo Bay?” This seemed like the worst possible way to combine Janet and bondage. She was tempted to throw off a ‘do you know who my father is?’ as if that wouldn’t make her the bad guy in every eighties movie.
Janet picked up a file from her inbox, looking it over while Wendy’s outburst wrapped up. “No. Of course not. Honestly, Ms. Cedar, show some decorum.”
“You’re the one talking about…the Patriot Act and stuff!”
“Now, the leak has been found and it’s not you or anyone you know. But, in the course of investigating this security breach, I have seen your private files from the time of the incident. Do you recall sending an e-mail on the fifteenth of last month?”
Wendy rolled her eyes, a bit peeved at Janet for getting so heavy-handed with her just for entering a Fandango contest or whatever on company time. “Let me think—were there a lot of naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence in it?”
Janet smirked—Wendy remembered how she had once thought of herself as a cinnamon roll, only now Janet was snitching some frosting off her.
Resetting her glasses on the bridge of her nose, she examined the document from the inbox once more. “From: [email protected]. To: [email protected]. Subject: Heatwave.” Janet cleared her throat. “‘Hey Tina, I took nutmeg before bed and it did nothing. I had insomnia all night, barely got four hours’ sleep, napped on the subway train like a tourist—horrible place to have the Dream. I’m not even sure I should tell you about it, you huge perv, after you promised me your dumb fad diet would have me dreaming about puppies and kittens and shit.’”
“Ummmmm,” said Wendy, who was now sure no, this was the worst possible combination of Janet and bondage, give her Gitmo any day. “That’s private and I don’t see what it has to do with the aerospace industry and you already said I wasn’t the mole, Jesus.”
Janet paused a moment, staring at Wendy as if trying to squeeze more words out of her suddenly parched throat, then continued. “‘Okay, so I’m dreaming that I’m working late in the office. Everything’s dark, it’s just me and Janet. I can see the lights of her office are on, but that’s the only light except for my computer. Sud
denly, I get an e-mail from her.’”
“I remember it, okay!” Wendy cried, surprising herself at how strident she suddenly was. “And I’m absolutely sure I wrote that on my lunch break, so that’s not even a little bit company business!”
“Really?” Janet asked, setting the paper mercifully down. “Is this the kind of fixation you think one employee should have on another employee?”
“It wasn’t a—it was just a weird dream!”
“One of several.”
“They made a lot of Transformers movies too, so what!?”
“I’m going to have to make a record of this.”
That was like biting into an ice cube. Wendy’s co-workers didn’t even know she was gay. “Janet, please. C’mon. It was just a stupid dream I had that I told a friend about. It’s nothing, nothing—”
“I would like you to conclusively identify the contents of this electronic communication, and then go on record assuring this company that the events relayed were absolutely false and had no bearing on reality.”
And just like that, Wendy snapped back into peevishness. It figured. “This is all because you don’t want people to think you’re having an office romance? Fuck, why’d you hire Elizabeth then?”
She shouldn’t have said that. She should not have said that. But people tended to notice when someone as L Word as Janet hired a thirty-something Instagram model to be her secretary.
“Are you willing to refute these—” Janet held up the paper with a huff of disapproval “—allegations, or not?”
“I’ll do it.” Wendy laughed harshly, out of nowhere. “You want me to write ‘Janet Lace is straight’ fifty times on the blackboard, too?”
Janet stood up from her desk. “I’ll thank you not to presume my sexual orientation.”
“Oh, you mean you have one?” Despite her looks, or maybe a little bit because of them, Janet was just about the most dead-below-the-waist woman Wendy had ever met. For a woman so achingly lovely, she was as withholding and tightly wound as a submarine hatch.
Janet’s reply was to open another, bigger drawer in her desk. She took out a video camera, the kind that fit neatly on one hand. She opened up the little viewfinder window and aimed it at Wendy before setting it down on her desktop. “Identify yourself for the record.”
Wendy heaved a sigh. “Wendy Augustine Cedar.”
“Augustine,” Janet repeated ponderously.
“It means ‘beloved of God’.”
“No, it doesn’t. Read now.”
Wendy shied away from the sight of her reflection in the camera lens, picking up the document and making an effort not to crush it in her grip. “‘From: [email protected]—’”
“Skip to where I left off,” Janet instructed. “You’d received an e-mail…”
And then she did a funny thing.
She unbuttoned the first button on her blouse.
For Janet, that was a lot of button.
It was a lot of button for Wendy, too.
“Read,” Janet said, and Wendy scanned the document to find her place, wondering how in the hell she was going to survive reading this out loud, with Janet watching her, with her button unbuttoned.
Wendy cleared her throat. She could feel Janet’s eyes on her—all over her, in fact—searching for the slightest hint of weakness, probably. Well, she wouldn’t be disappointed. Wendy could feel sweat like acupuncture needles, on her brow, the nape of her neck, under her arms, behind her knees. How could she suddenly be doing this at the end of the work-day, right when she should be wrapping up to go home? She should’ve been given advance notice, like for a meeting. A chance to freshen up. What she wouldn’t give for a hobo shower right about now.
“‘The e-mail tells me to go to Janet’s office,’” Wendy read, forcing her voice to be as strong and strident as it could be. She wouldn’t be intimidated. She’d read the goddamn e-mail like it was King Lear. “So I get up and I go. It feels like a mile, going through the dark office with all the darkened computer screens, the only light coming from Janet’s waiting office. Finally, I get there and I’m feeling this burning in my legs, like I’ve had a really good jog…yes, Tina, such a thing exists—’”
“Speak up, please,” Janet said.
Janet’s comment jerked Wendy back to reality. Not letting her lose herself in her recital, the bitch, her voice was perfectly audible. Wendy raised her voice. “‘I open the door. Or I try to, because just as I’m reaching it, it flies open, and who should be coming out but Elizabeth, bare-ass naked. Thank you, subconscious.’” Wendy deliberately met Janet’s eyes to dryly enunciate “‘Smiley face.’”
Janet offered her a thin smile as she paused the recording. Then pressed her intercom button. “Elizabeth, would you join us for a moment?”
“Yeah, boss,” Elizabeth replied, and Wendy’s heart skipped a beat.
Goddamn, but Janet knew every trick in the book. That confidence was part of what made her so appealing, but it was a bitch to have it turned on you. As hot—Wendy meant to think ‘empowering,’ she immediately corrected herself—as it was to see Janet demolish some jackass who doubted her credentials or criticized her because of her personal life rather than her work—and as fun as it was to imagine what else Janet might be a master of—at the moment, Wendy wished Janet was at least a little bit human, feeling at least a little bit of the vulnerability she felt.
Elizabeth came in, still looking like she and Janet were role-playing some sort of Mad Men sex scene.
Janet greeted her with a warm smile, in marked contrast to the decidedly more pinched one she had given Wendy. At the moment, Wendy would’ve given anything to be on Janet’s grin list.
“Wendy here,” Janet said, “is under the impression that we’re lovers.”
“I didn’t say that,” Wendy said quickly.
“You implied it.”
“I did not!”
Janet rewound the camcorder. Played the last few seconds. The audio quality was excellent. Wendy had bought a digital camera and somehow it only managed pictures in sepia tones. Of course Janet would practically have her own Q Branch in comparison.
“I think that’s a very clear implication,” Janet said, while Wendy looked around for a fire extinguisher that could handle her burning cheeks. “Now, Elizabeth,” Janet continued, “are we dating?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you single?”
“No. There’s this chick in security, she’s great, tightest ass you’ve ever seen—”
“Katie?” Wendy guessed, and Elizabeth nodded enthusiastically.
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” Janet said with a note of finality. “And am I single?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks. That will be all.”
Dismissed, Elizabeth turned on her heel and left the room. She closed the door behind her.
“You may resume,” Janet said, pressing the record button again.
Wendy gave her a fixed look, barely glancing at the paper. She remembered the dream all too clearly. “‘I go into the office and there Janet is. Behind her desk.’”
Wendy paused, noting Janet’s current position with dark irony. As if in response—and there was definitely a wan acknowledgment in how Janet’s eyebrows jostled curiously—Janet got up from her perch, came around her desk, and now leaned against it, facing Wendy. She looked even more unbelievable in full, her pencil skirt gracing her legs like dark leaves after a brisk spring rain, her white silk blouse tight to her body. It’d fallen lower with her motion, the unbuttoned portion gaping wide over the beginnings of the black lace camisole underneath.
Wendy felt absurdly tempted by that glimpse, like Janet had set out bait for her and was ready to spring a trap when she went for it. There was the slightest of upticks at the corner of Janet’s mouth; a smirking smile waiting to be born when Wendy accepted the challenge. Wendy didn’t know if she should ignore it or… There was no way Janet wanted her to make a move, was there?
Of course no
t. Absolutely not. She was just trying to fluster Wendy and Wendy had to be unflusterable. Or, you know, an actual word.
Damn, Janet’s necklace… Wendy would give a lot to spend five minutes as that necklace. Be close to that cleavage and be wrapped around Janet’s throat? Wasn’t that the American Dream?
“‘She starts riding me—’” Here Wendy paused, giving Janet her own impish look. She might not’ve been able to keep a relationship going for so much as three dates, but she could sure as hell get one started, and looks like the one she gave Janet were a big reason why. In terms of eye-fucking, her dick was bomb.
“‘As usual,’” Wendy continued, gratified to see Janet blink a few times. “‘I don’t know what it is—no one likes getting read the riot act. But when Janet does it, it’s like I’m a teenager again. My palms are sweaty and my throat is dry and my knees are weak. All that…’”
Wendy paused again, unconsciously this time. Christ, this really was embarrassing. Was Janet really doing it for some sort of ego trip or was she trying to cover her ass against some sort of lawsuit?
“‘All that intelligence and intensity focused on me, even castigating me, it’s intoxicating. I almost want her to make me cry. Slap me. Hug me and tell me she knows I’m doing my best. I don’t even know. All I know is, in the dream I don’t have to know. I don’t have to worry about doing the right thing, because Janet takes control. She tells me I’ve been slacking off, being inefficient, the usual—and that if I’m not getting paid to work, maybe I should be doing something else…’”
Wendy’s voice trailed off. Her eyes had been locked on the page, going over the crisp black letters. There was not a single dot of blotted ink. Janet’s printer had put it all down perfectly, making it look realer than real. On her computer, the words had been minutely distorted by her old monitor with its lightly-smeared screen, but on paper, they might as well have been carved in stone.
She couldn’t bear to look up, to see Janet waiting expectantly. Her hands gripping the edge of her desk. Those long fingers curling into the darkness underneath…
“Is this what you want?” Wendy asked in a low voice, wondering if Janet would call the whole thing off, say it was all a prank, that she just wanted to know how far Wendy would go before sniffing bullshit.
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